Honors College boasts record growth, expands on-ramps for students to gain honors education at UTSA

FEBRUARY 14, 2024 — The UTSA Honors College has achieved a record enrollment after building partnerships across the university and city to create more than a dozen on-ramps into the college. This enhanced accessibility is enabling a greater number of high-achieving Roadrunners to benefit from the honors experience and graduate with honors.

In alignment with the university’s record fall enrollment, the UTSA Honors College welcomed its largest incoming class of 574 students and is topping an enrollment that now exceeds 2,000 students. Over the past five years, the number of students in the Honors College has grown by 75%.

“The UTSA Honors Experience helps students design their life and career paths based on their passions and academic interests,” said Jill Fleuriet, UTSA vice provost for honors education. “We are committed to making an honors education more accessible to prospective and current Roadrunners who want more high-impact learning experiences like research, internships, service-learning, entrepreneurship, study abroad, leadership training and other skill-developing opportunities. An Honors education at UTSA is about discovering your passions and achieving your highest potential.”

“The UTSA Honors Experience helps students design their life and career paths based on their passions and academic interests.”

For more than 20 years, the Honors College has nurtured academically driven and diverse student leaders who are on a mission to chart their own path and change the world.

The college’s experience-based curriculum and programs help students expand their knowledge, explore career opportunities, and develop as adaptable leaders and public servants, giving them a competitive advantage in today’s workforce. The following internship-based programs, which are open to all UTSA students, are aligned with the university’s mission to prepare career-ready Roadrunners:

• The UTSA Citymester program is a summer of internship, service and seminar courses across San Antonio. Students work with nonprofits, businesses or other agencies based on their career goals and engage in a micro-internship, service project and leadership development.
• The Bill Archer Fellowship program brings highly motivated and accomplished juniors and seniors to Washington, D.C. in either the fall and spring semester to participate in internships within federal agencies and nonprofit organizations, and take classes focusing on policy, economics and persuasion.
• The Legislative Fellows program gives students hands-on policy experience and cultivates their leadership skills while interning in prominent member’s offices at the Texas Capitol during the biennial legislative sessions.

Students who participate in these programs are eligible to become a member of the Honors College if they are not already, and their experiences count toward UTSA’s requirements to graduate from the Honors College.

The Honors College has also developed several admission-based programs.

Starting in Fall 2024, UTSA will accept its first cohort of Texas Leadership Scholars. Supported by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, this premier statewide scholarship provides students financial support to attend more than two dozen top Texas public universities.

UTSA’s Texas Leadership Scholars will be recognized as one of the special scholar programs housed within the Honors College along with the Top Scholars and Terry Scholars. As such, they will enjoy unique leadership development programming, study abroad and research opportunities, and live on campus in the special scholars wing of the Honors Residential College during their first year.

Also beginning fall 2024, the UTSA Honors College will offer direct admission to high-achieving students from San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) who choose to come to UTSA due to the recently announced SAISD to UTSA admission pipeline program.

Since fall 2021, the college has partnered with the division of Strategic Enrollment to align its admission of first-year and transfer students with the university’s merit-based Distinguished Presidential Scholarship and Distinguished Transfer Scholarship, respectively. Incoming awardees of either scholarship are now automatically admitted into the Honors College. This strategic alignment alone has greatly streamlined the honors admissions process, resulting in approximately 160 more honors students annually.

Additionally, the Honors College hosts two of the university’s premier competitive, merit-based scholar programs, which draw top students from across Texas to UTSA.

Now in its 10^th year, the UTSA Top Scholar program admits 10 remarkable students each fall. In addition to providing comprehensive funding, the program offers academic, personal and professional exploration opportunities to help Top Scholars develop into the country’s next generation of leaders.

The service-oriented Terry Scholars at UTSA recruits another group of highly accomplished and community-engaged students to the university. UTSA is one of 13 public universities in Texas to host Terry Scholars, a competitive scholarship program supported by the Terry Foundation, the largest private source of educational scholarships in the state. UTSA welcomes between 12 and 24 Terry Scholars each fall.

Lastly, the college also partners with San Antonio College to welcome any incoming transfer students who graduate from the San Antonio College (SAC) Honors Academy into the Honors College. On average, about 10 SAC Honors Academy graduates join the UTSA Honors College each semester.

To help more current UTSA students gain access to the benefits of an honors education, the college is also working on expanding its partnerships with the university’s academic colleges to develop, streamline and enhance college-based honors programs.

Currently, there are honors programs within the Carlos Alvarez College of Business, College of Sciences, and the Margie and Bill Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design. The Honors College is working with the College for Education and Human Development, College for Health, Community and Policy and the College of Liberal and Fine Arts to develop honors programs for students in those colleges.

The UTSA Honors College offers one of the most unique experiential honors curricula in the nation. Honors students participate in hands-on, project-based learning that they can customize to fit their goals. With a combination of courses and signature experiences, students can graduate with honors without adding significant additional coursework or delaying graduation.

Other benefits of being in the Honors College include priority registration, small classes with top faculty, access to additional scholarships, dedicated academic advising, and regular social and academic activities. In addition, all first-year Honors students receive a housing scholarship of up to $1,500 to live on campus in dedicated honors housing.

— KC Gonzalez